Website

Location

Indianapolis, IN

Category

Fiction & Literature, Poetry, General Non-Fiction, Essays

Leon Edward Pettiway

Leon E. Pettiway, (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), is Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. During his academic career, his research focused on the integration of geographical and criminological theories to explain patterns of crime in urban areas, and he has published a series of articles on the impact of ghettoization on patterns of crime participation, the role of environmental and individual factors in arson, the relationship between an individual's drug use and criminal participation with respect to the formation of crime partnerships, and the criminal decision-making process of addicts and nonusers in light of various environmental cues.

Upon the conclusion of a major field research project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he completed Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets (Temple University Press) which examined the lives of drug addicted, gay transvestites who commit a variety of crimes and Workin' It: Women Living Through Drugs and Crime (Temple University Press) which chronicled the drug use and crime participation of a group of inner-city women. Before his retirement, his intellectual work centered on the construction of knowledge and the manner in which Eastern and Western philosophical traditions might be integrated into criminological discourse and criminal justice practice. In that regard, he is among only a handful of African-American males who is a full-ordained Buddhist monk in the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In retirement, he focuses his attention on his spiritual practice and writing.

Works

1996

Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets

Many straight Americans would never embrace homosexuals as neighbors, co-workers, or friends. Still less would they accept as equals those transgendered individual;s who work the streets to provide themselves with drug money.

This book seeks to change that perception. It celebrates the lives of Shontae, China, Keisha, Detra, and Monique; five African-American gay hustlers who struggle to survive and to maintain a life of dignity as value in the face of their drug use and criminal activity. As individuals they vary in terms of background. None of them has escaped the ravages of urban decline, crime, drugs, and poverty that accompany life in an inner city. But by the same token, none of them has capitualted the stresses with which they live.